Scribblenauts No Longer Arbitrarily Unavailable In Europe

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Remember when Scribblenauts Unlimited simultaneously launched in all territories thanks to the lightspeed techno-magic of the 21st century? Well then, congratulations. You evidently live in a pristinely wound clockwork dimension where things actually make sense. Others of us aren’t so fortune. Case in point: the entirety of Europe. While North America got the whimsically open-ended puzzler back in November, Warner Bros decided to shove its European release date into “early 2013” for no apparent reason. Seriously, even developer 5th Cell was basically baffled. But now, finally, mercifully, anyone can grab it on Steam.

On the upside, Unlimited’s definitely worth the wait. Defying the extremely brittle shackles of Warner Bros region-locking, John scribbled naught but good things about Scribblenauts. (And, OK, also a few totally legitimate criticisms.) Still though, these are the words you should be paying attention to:

“When Scribblenauts Unlimited all comes together, it’s unquestionably a magical thing. Being tasked with turning a station wagon into a fire engine, I was told I needed to provide a DJ with something he could wire up to it to make it loud. A siren seemed the obvious choice, but I wondered – maybe, just maybe? I typed in the word, and yup – it offered me two choices: a traditional siren, or the alluring sea monster. Picking the second one, there appeared a winged, green-haired lady, warbling notes. I gave her to the DJ, who carried her over and attached her to the car. Done.”

Steam Workshop support’s also part of the package, so if you go rummaging through your infinite bag of tricks for something that simply doesn’t exist (for instance, Pokemon or a version of Jesus who’s made of cheese or a shark that’s also a minigun), just get it from somebody else. Or make it yourself. The editor’s pretty simple, so the strange, twisted reaches of your imagination are your only limit.

So yes, go! Create things! Frighten children! Scribblenauts will run you £22.99.

I’d have been fairly happy to pay something around ‘full price’ for it if it hadn’t been for that ridiculous Amazon sale; if the publisher’s happy with it being sold for peanuts months before it’s even available here then I’m happy to wait until it’s at a similar price again.

So, did Mr Slaczka reveal the reason for this ridiculous delay? Because I’m pretty sure he said that there were actual, real and totally not-bullcrap-related reasons that he just couldn’t talk about until later.

Is there even a proper game any more? All I saw were tasks, barely any platforming. And the change to areas rather than levels seemed like a mistake. Even when you do a task, the animation and feedback is sorely lacking so you don’t feel like you’ve really done the thing that was asked.

All the videos of people experimenting seemed pointless too, you make a thing, then you make it fly or give it a flaming sword. And that’s about it, you can’t do anything compelling with what you make.

Wait, solving tasks is not a game? Did the adventure game get kicked out?

I did find it too repetetive though, mostly because I think I was too creative for the game and later on just played it safe, and ended up missing out on interesting combinations that would have indeed worked (like moving a big spiked ball by attaching it to a tiny tow truck, putting a thief there so he would steal the truck, then putting a diamond on the other side of the room to the thief would drive there to pick it up and drag the ball with him) (it didn’t work because I tried ‘carjacker’).

Was there ever any platforming in Scribblenauts? I played both the DS games but I can’t recall a single moment that required anything more than running like hell from whatever angry entity you accidentally created.

“Nope. It’s due to stuff I can’t talk about until 2013. Scribblenauts and Super Scribblenauts were released NA and EU the same day. Trust me. I want your money.”

…and other such comments implied there was some kind of big… thing…. happening with the EU release and that we’d all be happy we waited and they could tell us more later. So what happened? Has anyone managed to follow up on this?

I want to believe they weren’t bullshitting us on this, but I’m still not seeing any reason for the delay.

I think you read too much into that. He couldn’t talk about it because it was imposed by the publisher, with whom he has a contract that won’t allow him to discuss why said publisher is effectively screwing him out of European sales.

My personal favorite puzzle solutions:
-Giving a fisherman a grenade is an acceptable way to help him fish.
-Stopping an internet pirate can be accomplished with an intercontinental ballistic missile (why hasn’t America thought of this before?)
-A person can’t sleep because their roommate is snoring. Solved by making the person deaf.
-Santa needs a gift for nice children. “Creepy Old Man” is an acceptable gift.
-Santa needs a gift for naughty children. “Dirty Panties” is an acceptable gift.
-Rudolf needs to be even brighter to guide Santa. Making Rudolph radioactive is acceptable but then Santa walks past Rudolf and dies of radiation poisoning.